MoD march out HR system, firing at savings

Capgemini and Microsoft project to deliver ‘millions’ in savings

By
Leo King
|
23 March 2009

The Ministry of Defence has completed the rollout of a major human resources self-service portal for staff and troops in the field.

The Internet Access to Shared Services portal, created by Capgemini and Microsoft, is aimed at delivering savings of over one million pounds in the next 10 years. The savings will come from a reduction in manual tasks by the MoD’s HR department, and a cut in paper usage, the MoD said.

The system is initially being made available to 10,000 MoD staff personnel including troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but may later be rolled out to most of the 320,000 total MoD staff.

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It will allow staff to carry out a range of tasks including filling in expenses, updating personal details and booking themselves on training courses, using a PC, laptop or mobile phone.

Security is based on chip and pin smartcards, as well as the Capgemini identity and access management service and the Microsoft Intelligent Application Gateway. It is hosted on the MoD Defence Electronics Commerce Service, which is being touted as a secure electronic interface.

David Longhurst, project leader at the MoD Internet Access to Shared Services project, said the MoD previously had “around 10,000 staff unable to access to our internal systems online from their place of work”.

CIO Profiles

The security landscape has changed beyond recognition and never more so than in the past five years

We have moved from systems and devices that were locked down as a matter of course, to a working environment that encourages greater levels of access and collaboration across multiple IT estates and devices. The CIO’s role in all this has changed from one of keeping infrastructures under lock and key at all costs, to implementing security policies that are just as robust, if not more so, than before – while allowing for increased business flexibility and workforce mobility.